Fifty-Two Stories

Pyotr Dmitrich undressed and got into his bed. He silently lit a cigarette and also started watching the fly. His gaze was stern and troubled. For about five minutes Olga Mikhailovna silently looked at his handsome profile. It seemed to her for some reason that if her husband suddenly turned his face to her and said, “Olya, it’s hard for me,” she would burst out crying or laughing, and would feel better. She thought that her legs ached and her whole body was ill at ease because her soul was strained.

“Pyotr, what are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing really…,” her husband replied.

“You’ve been keeping some sort of secrets from me lately. That’s not good.”

“Why is it not good?” Pyotr Dmitrich replied drily and not at once. “Each of us has a personal life, so we must also have secrets.”

“Personal life…secrets…That’s all just words! Understand that you’re insulting me!” said Olga Mikhailovna, sitting up on her bed. “If your soul is heavy, why do you conceal it from me? Why do you find it more comfortable to be open with other women, and not with your wife? I heard you pour yourself out today to Lyubochka.”

“Well, congratulations. I’m very glad you heard me.”

This meant: Leave me alone, don’t interfere when I’m thinking! Olga Mikhailovna was indignant. The vexation, hatred, and anger that had accumulated in her in the course of the day suddenly boiled over: she wanted to tell her husband everything at once, not put it off till the next day, to insult him, to take her revenge…Trying hard not to shout, she said:

“Know, then, that this is all vile, vile, vile. I’ve been hating you all day today—that’s what you’ve done!”

Pyotr Dmitrich also sat up.

“Vile, vile, vile!” Olga Mikhailovna went on, beginning to tremble all over. “Don’t go congratulating me! Better if you congratulate yourself! A shame, a disgrace! You’ve been lying so much that you’re ashamed to be in the same room with your wife! False man! I see through you and understand your every step!”

“Olya, when you’re out of sorts, please warn me. Then I’ll sleep in my study.”

Having said that, Pyotr Dmitrich took his pillow and left the bedroom. Olga Mikhailovna had not foreseen that. For several minutes, her mouth open and her whole body trembling, she silently stared at the door through which her husband had disappeared and tried to understand what it meant. Was it one of the methods that false people use in arguments when they’re wrong, or was it an insult deliberately inflicted on her pride? How was she to understand it? Olga Mikhailovna recalled her cousin, an officer, a merry fellow, who often told her laughingly that when, during the night, his “dear spouse began to carp at him,” he usually took his pillow and went whistling off to his study, leaving his wife in a stupid and ridiculous position. This officer was married to a rich, capricious, and stupid woman, whom he did not respect but merely tolerated.

Olga Mikhailovna leaped out of bed. In her opinion, only one thing was left for her now: to dress quickly and leave this house forever. The house belonged to her, but so much the worse for Pyotr Dmitrich. Without considering whether or not there was any need for it, she quickly went to the study to inform her husband of her decision (“Women’s logic!” flashed through her mind), and to say something insulting and sarcastic to him in farewell…

Pyotr Dmitrich was lying on the sofa pretending to read a newspaper. On a chair beside him a candle was burning. His face was hidden behind the newspaper.

“Would you care to explain the meaning of this? I ask you, sir!”

“Sir…,” Pyotr Dmitrich repeated mockingly, not showing his face. “I’m sick of it, Olga! Honestly, I’m tired and can’t deal with it right now…We can quarrel tomorrow.”

“No, I understand you perfectly well!” Olga Mikhailovna went on. “You hate me! Yes, yes! You hate me for being wealthier than you! You’ll never forgive me for it and will always lie to me!” (“Women’s logic!” again flashed through her mind.) “Right now, I know, you’re laughing at me…I’m even sure you married me only so as to have property qualifications,¹⁵ and those trashy horses…Oh, I’m so unhappy!”

Pyotr Dmitrich dropped the newspaper and sat up. The unexpected insult startled him. With a childishly helpless smile he gave his wife a lost look, and, as if shielding himself from a blow, reached his arms out to her and said pleadingly:

“Olya!”

And expecting her to say something else terrible, he pressed himself to the back of the sofa, and his big figure now seemed as helplessly childish as his smile.

“Olya, how could you say that?” he whispered.

Olga Mikhailovna came to her senses. She suddenly felt her mad love for this man, remembered that he was her husband, Pyotr Dmitrich, without whom she could not live a single day, and who also loved her madly. She burst into loud sobs, in a voice not her own, clutched her head, and ran back to the bedroom.